Malcolm Rippeth

Malcolm's work in theatre, dance and opera can be seen throughout the UK and worldwide. He is an Associate Artist of Kneehigh Theatre.

His current schedule includes Brief Encounter (West End); The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, FUP(Kneehigh); Capriccio, Falstaff and The Skating Rink (Garsington Opera); Rumpelstiltskin (balletLORENT); War and Peace (Welsh National Opera); La Belle Hélène (Opéra national de Lorraine​); and Wise Children (Old Vic).

A full credits list is available by following the link above.

He was awarded the WhatsOnStage Award for Best Lighting Designer for his work on Brief Encounter and Six Characters in Search of an Author in the West End and a Village Voice OBIE as a member of the design team for Brief Encounter at St. Ann's Warehouse, New York. He was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Brief Encounter on Broadway, for a 2016 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Tristan and Yseult, for the 2017 New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design of a Musical for 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips and in 2018 for an OFFIE for Songs for Nobodies at Wilton's Music Hall and a Knight of Illumination Award for Falstaff at Garsington Opera.

From 2016 to 2017 he was responsible for the design of the temporary lighting installation at Shakespeare's Globe in London, and lit many shows both there and in their indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse including A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Boudica,The Secret Theatre and Romantics Anonymous.

As Associate Artist of Kneehigh his previous designs include Wah! Wah! Girls and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (West End);Tristan and Yseult, 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, The Wild Bride, The Red Shoes (UK, USA); Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) (UK, New Zealand, Colombia, South Korea);The Tin Drum, Nights at the Circus, Don John and Cymbeline.

Falstaff

The designs by Giles Cadle and the lighting by Malcolm Rippeth, particularly for the final scene in Windsor Forest, were delightful.
Sebastian Scotney, The Arts Desk18/06/2018

Capriccio

...played out on Tobias Hoheisel’s clever designs and strikingly lit by Malcolm Rippeth, this ensemble piece has nuance and verve...
Neil Fisher, The Times05/06/2018

Lighting, by Malcolm Rippeth, shows off everything to utmost advantage. At one point, as the Countess contemplates an abstract picture hanging on the wall, an unseen light source casts her silhouette across the canvas. The result is that she is looking at her painting and her shadow at the same time, in the same place. Art and life are again interfused.
James M. Keller, Santa Fe New Mexican24/07/2016

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk

Sophia Clist's costumes and scenic design keep the pair perpetually within the borders of an evolving Chagall painting, which Malcolm Rippeth lights to gorgeous effect, in fitting homage to a painter of whom Picasso once said, "There's been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has."
Margaret Gray, LA Times01/03/2018

Chagall continues to enshrine their loving moments in his fantastical paintings using a unique palette exploding with vibrant colors, which are recreated by Malcolm Rippeth’s gorgeous light design. He captures that essence by drenching the stage and actors with the intense colors used by Chagall, right down to pinpointing their faces with a kaleidoscope of changing hues.
Beverly Cohn, LA West Media28/02/2018

Vibrant colour is very much central to the play, recalling but not aping Chagall's artwork. Longstanding Kneehigh lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth should be congratulated for ensuring purple, red, yellow and green are as much major characters as the Chagalls themselves.
Lee Trewhela, West Briton16/07/2016

The Secret Theatre

A major part of the Sam Wanamaker’s USP is that it’s lit by candlelight. Yet with Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design this feels more pronounced – the darkness darker, the flickering light more precarious.
Rosemary Waugh, Exeunt Magazine24/11/2017

Indeed, Dunster and lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth make full use of [the Wanamaker’s trademark period-faithful candlelight] to drive home the most common metaphor for espionage: as we watch all these candles being repeatedly extinguished and relit, it is borne directly in on us how much of this business takes place in the shadows, how much we are kept in the dark.
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times23/11/2017

It's perfectly at home in the candlelit glower of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth descends the play into darkness with a simmering, slow-burning menace.
Matt Trueman, WhatsOnStage23/11/2017

Rumpelstiltskin

Malcolm Rippeth’s hugely effective lighting (with Michael Morgan)—he really does know how to make gold glitter and use shadow play effectively.
Peter Lathan, British Theatre Guide26/10/2017

Costumes (Michele Clapton), set (Phil Eddolls) and lighting (Malcolm Rippeth and Michael Morgan) are all gorgeous.
David Whetstone, Evening Chronicle26/10/2017

Romantics Anonymous

The chandeliers have been dispensed with for this particular production, however the lit-up signs that form the main focus of Lez Brotherston's set and some more stellar lighting design from Malcolm Rippeth make this absence all worthwhile.
Broadway World27/10/2017

The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum certainly makes you think, with Malcolm Rippeth's brooding lighting design a permanent reminder of the dark nature of this production.
Phil Hopkins, The Yorkshire Times19/10/2017

Stunningly sculpted by Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting, its faded walls, decaying grandeur and scattered rubble are an ever-present reminder of the destruction human beings are capable of wreaking on one another, as well as of the beauty we have created in the world.
Catherine Love, The Guardian06/10/2017

Played out on a richly designed and lit stage, this is glorious, anarchic storytelling, with the ability to captivate as well as challenge its audience.
Nigel Smith, The Stage05/10/2017

Boudica

Cunobeline taking the mic and launching into The Clash classic "London Calling", complete with dancing and a stadium-standard light show (designed by Malcolm Rippeth), is a thrilling and entirely uplifting moment that's met with roars of crowd approval
Jane Kemp, WhatsOnStage14/09/2017

Credit must also go to Malcolm Rippeth for his lighting design, once more providing a fantastical palette - a particular highlight in that regard has to be Boudica's death scene, the vivid colours altering seamlessly as the belladonna takes hold.
Broadway World13/09/2017

Cockroaches

...played out on Tobias Hoheisel’s clever designs and strikingly lit by Malcolm Rippeth, this ensemble piece has nuance and verve...
Neil Fisher, The Times05/06/2018

Pelléas et Mélisande

Lit with considerable imaginative skill by Malcolm Rippeth...
George Hall, The Stage19/06/2017

Idomeneo

Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting designs also exploit the changing ambient conditions, gradually intensifying a contrast between warm, period lighting from candles inside the main container and industrial bleached-out starkness outside it. In true Enlightenment style, the ending brought a resolution of all-over brightness...
Flora Wilson, The Guardian07/07/2016

In Parenthesis

David Pountney’s staging shows the experienced hand of a master in its compact, effective delivery, its use of light, shadow-play and projection.
Colin Clarke, Seen and Heard International01/07/2016

The lighting design (Malcolm Rippeth) recreates the multifarious shifts of perspective in Jones’ text - which explores not just Ball’s experience but a collective consciousness - and the hallucinatory worlds into with the poet-dreamer Ball’s mind wanders. Through an oval aperture above the parabolic wooden trench, we peer into a pure azure sky which darkens to indigo. An apricot dawn deepens to blood-crimson, as Ball mounts the ship’s gang-plank and he imagines the fires of hell. As they near the front line, Ball envisions Lieutenant Jenkins as Christ, a shepherd leading his sheep through the wilderness. Rippeth’s disorientating shifts of colour and intensity create a mood that might be termed romantic surrealism, and they are match by Bell’s score...
Claire Seymour, Opera Today29/06/2016

It all comes to life thanks to gorgeous lighting from Malcolm Rippeth.
Mike Smith, walesonline.co.uk15/05/2016

A Midsummer Night's Dream

At last, Shakespeare’s Globe has seen the light!
Literally. In her inaugural production as the Globe’s artistic director, Emma Rice has done away with the terrible flat floodlights previously judged as ‘authentic’ (as if), brought in state-of-the-art lighting, and has lit up this glorious space as never before.
Georgina Brown, Daily Mail14/05/2016

Pleasure

The lighting design was excellent: appropriately dingy, the letters of the word “pleasure” were outlined in various neon shades and, in the final moments, burnt dazzlingly, transfiguring the toilet into a sacred space.
Bernard Hughes, The Arts Desk13/05/2016

Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs)

946

Hats off to Lez Brotherton's spare but effective design (sandbags, tractor and a propeller evoking time and place) and Malcolm Rippeth's lighting, particularly stunning during the play's true lump-in-throat moment when a soldier drowns.
Lee Trewhela, Cornish Guardian06/08/2015

Lez Brotherston’s set is wondrous, with its aircraft propeller, huge slatted skies, galvanised troughs, and tractor. With Malcolm Rippeth’s dramatic lighting, the effects are atmospheric and intense, heightening the show’s unnerving ability to slip under the wire of our conscious selves.
Francesca Morrison, The Stage31/07/2015

Giovanna d'Arco

...the young peasant girl Joan is first seen, assuming a medium blue cowl as if in imitation of the Virgin to whom she is praying, cleverly reflected on the side wall and in shadow on the rear set by the immensely effective Lighting Designer, Malcolm Rippeth.
Roderic Dunnett, Behind the Arras04/08/2015

It looked gorgeous, though. A glowing cloudscape rolled above the two black marble walls of Russell Craig’s set; with imaginative lighting by Malcolm Rippeth plus a bit of smoke, the various tableaux were reflected back like oil paintings – tableaux being the operative word.
Richard Bratby, The Arts Desk27/07/2015

The temperature of the tragedy is mirrored in Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting: rolling storm clouds, shrapnel and blood.
Anna Picard, The Times21/07/2015

It was a joy, too, to see a production where the director, the veteran Elijah Moshinsky, knows exactly what he’s doing, crisply marshalling the eventful libretto’s opposing forces (...) through Russell Craig’s simple slats, inventively illuminated by Malcolm Rippeth.
Geoff Brown, The Spectator18/07/2015

Elijah Moshinsky, well versed in Verdi production in eminent environs, made what he could of this basic set and a few props whilst being particularly aided by imaginative lighting.
Robert J Farr, Seen and Heard International14/07/2015

The staging in an open topped mirrored walled set , which provides an effective “Wall of Death” vantage point for nuns, devils and onlookers, designed by Russell Craig, lends atmosphere, heightened by Malcolm Rippeth’s inspired lighting effects.
Philip Radcliffe, Manchester Theatre Awards14/07/2015

The Coronation of Poppea

Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design is yet another strength of this production; enhancing the experience with constant variety and subtlety, whilst always alive to the mood of the moment.
Martin Thomasson, British Theatre Guide22/11/2014

The overall design is complemented with some innovative lighting effects by Malcolm Rippeth, showing the passage of time and the rising of the morning sun.
Richard Trinder, Yorkshire Times04/10/2014

The Jacobin

Glowing in the gentle autumnal lighting design of Malcolm Rippeth, its scenes unfold, in front of a gauzy cloudscape, like pages from an old Czech picture book.
Hilary Finch, The Times14/07/2014

Brief Encounter

Sharing star billing with Rice and her company of actor/singers is as extraordinary a design package as you’re likely to see this or any year: Neil Murray’s set and costumes, Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting, Simon Baker’s sound design, and above all Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington’s film design and projections
Steven Stanley, Stage Scene LA21/02/2014

The crack creative team of designer Neil Murray, lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth, sound designer Simon Baker and projection and film designers Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington create illusions (and allusions) that are a performance of their own.
David Zampatti, The West Australian29/11/2013

Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design provides all the atmospheric touches to bring it to life.
Tony Busch, Adelaide Theatre Guide16/09/2013

... clever lighting that invites audience members to imagine a location rather than delineating it for them.
Greg Elliott, In Daily16/09/2013

The result is a visually intriguing blend of stage and screen effects, which begins with the red curtain rising to reveal Laura (Adelaide performer Michelle Nightingale) standing on the platform, delectably side-lit, as if in rich Technicolor, turning to step through a movie screen to join her husband, Fred, in a monochrome film version of their suburban sitting room. [...] The strengths are in Neil Murray's design and evocative costumes, Malcolm Rippeth's lighting and Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington's stylish projection and film design.
Murray Bramwell, The Australian16/09/2013

The production’s unflaggingly inventive design team — Neil Murray (set and costumes), Malcolm Rippeth (lighting), Simon Baker (sound) and Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington (projections) — doesn’t just conjure up different locations with witty efficiency. It also subtly conveys the transformative, dissociative nature of passion,
Ben Brantley, The New York Times28/09/2010

Malcolm Rippeth's lighting design shifts the mood starkly so that at times you feel as though you too are in a black and white movie.
Gwen Orel, The L Magazine28/12/2009

They are aided by Malcolm Rippeth's precisely rendered lighting, which carves the people out of darkness, leaving plenty of space for the images. He also works some highly effective color-temperature contrasts, moving from warm, almost sepia-toned, incandescent looks to a colder feel that blends perfectly with the large-scale images.
David Barbour, Lighting and Sound America09/12/2009

Dark Road

Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design is key to allowing the play to jump-cut between McArthur’s reality and her imagination.
Thom Dibdin, The Stage30/09/2013

This is aided no end by Francis O’Connor’s complex yet effective set which itself twists, turns and transforms, and Malcolm Rippeth’s unnerving lighting design together with Philip Pinsky’s claustrophobic soundtrack.
Keith D, Edinburgh Spotlight29/09/2013

Tristan and Yseult

In short, high praise is deserved by everyone involved with the show, from the cast to Rice to set designer Bill Mitchell, lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth and sound designer Gregory Clarke.
Pat Craig, San Jose Mercury News27/11/2013

Ours was the Fen Country

The Threepenny Opera

The minimalist concert staging by Ted Huffman was nonetheless elegant, wherein all of the elements, like the lighting by Malcolm Rippeth, contributed to a propitious atmosphere.
Jean-Marcel Humbert, Forum Opera28/02/2013

The Wild Bride

Bill Mitchell’s sepia set design, enhanced with lighting design by Malcolm Rippeth, is evocative of a yellowing old photograph.
Sarah Taylor Ellis, Stage and Cinema05/03/2013

At once familiar and distant, the land we visit is deceptively simple and pleasantly intricate, with a single set piece made of ladders and branches reaching toward the heavens and expressive, almost painted lighting (owed to the gifts of Bill Mitchell and Malcom Rippeth respectively).
Jessica Cauttero, Brooklyn Exposed01/03/2013

...the costumes, the set, and the lighting are whimsical and smart.
The New Yorker28/02/2013

The lighting by Malcolm Rippeth is excellent and does the most to create the right magical atmosphere from the start.
Michael Giltz, Huffington Post27/02/2013

There’s nothing fancy about Bill Mitchell’s set – there’s an apple tree made of ladders and scaffolding – but it springs to life under Malcolm Rippeth’s lights, [and] it just goes to show you that with light to help paint stage pictures and intriguing humans inhabiting a captivating story, you don’t need bells and whistles.
Chad Jones, Theater Dogs - Bay Area Backstage08/12/2011

The stage, too, is streaked with rainbow lighting. When the devil tempts the father with golden trinkets, the action plays out against intoxicating purple haze. Bright white lightning flashes rip through the devil’s most dastardly moments. And, when the girl is banished to the woods, the stage bleeds green.
Miriam Gillinson, Culture Wars15/09/2011

The Dead

There is considerable more lilt to one hypnotising effect of Malcolm Rippeth’s lights, and it is – literally – inspired. “Have you ever seen snow like it?” someone asks. No, never, is the only answer, and there the story seems beautifully transformed without having to make a drama out of it.
Peter Crawley, The Irish Times14/12/2012

Rapunzel

...the sets and lighting were quite extraordinarily lovely. Phil Eddolls’s art nouveau gates morphed smoothly from park to prison and Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting created a ravishing Lotte Reiniger-style shadowplay – Rapunzel’s terrifying first haircut was the stuff of the very best nightmares.
Louise Levene, The Sunday Telegraph07/04/2013

... there were loads of similarly haunting theatrical images, often facilitated by the leafy iron gates of Phil Eddolls’ sets and the lurking shadows of Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design...
Jeffrey Gordon baker, londondance.com03/04/2013

This theme is further enhanced with the intimate stage set-up where set designer Phill Eddolls and lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth use single colours such as twinkling purple lights or the perfunctory shade of red on the tips of the rampion to provide powerful tugs on the senses.
Tiffany Pritchard, londonist.com31/03/2013

There is also a wonderful use of silhouette and shadow throughout, which creates powerful images, and is aesthetically stunning
James Moore, sosogay.com30/03/2013

Wah! Wah! Girls

But the real strength of the Wah! Wah! Girls musical is not the singing, dancing, or story. But rather, the often unsung lighting designer, Malcolm Rippeth. I have not seen a better choreographed, more intricate lighting show ever in a musical. Sometimes it felt like every single colour of the rainbow was used to light up the stage, but all at the right angles and directions to create an explosion of colours. I presume when drug users say they are tripping, this is what it must feel like.
Boon Koh, The London Insider12/09/2012

The Seven Year Itch

BLANCHE McIntyre directs a delectable revival of George Axelrod’s comedy at the Playhouse, where the design, by James Cotterill, and lighting by Malcolm Rippeth, are simply superb.
Stella Taylor, Wiltshire Gazette & Herald30/03/2012

The period stage set is brilliant, lighting and sound effects superb.
Brendan McCusker, Southern Daily Echo20/03/2012

It is a lighting director’s dream, with flashbacks and imagined events all relying on some very clever effects. So, take a special bow, Malcolm Rippeth.
Christopher Wain, Salisbury Journal19/03/2012

...the clever lighting design of Malcolm Rippeth [...] is used to great comic effect in a couple of stand-out sequences.
Simon Cole, Whatsonstage.com16/03/2012

Blood, Sweat and Tears

Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Neil Murray’s set and costumes (complete with a wonderfully employed stage revolve) and Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting are brilliantly attuned to the tone of [the] production.
Mark Brown, Herald Scotland29/10/2009

It’s all highly enjoyable and atmospheric [...] with Neil Murray’s rotating set of dark obelisks conspiring with Malcolm Rippeth’s beautiful lighting effects to cast long shadows across the stage.
Allan Radcliffe, The List23/10/2009

Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness

The device of a travelling freak-show is not just a sweetener, though, but is fully enjoyed for its own sake, as evident in the design, fully maintained in the lighting of Malcolm Rippeth, the atmospheric soundtrack of composer Tom Mills and the succession of theatrical tricks involving disembodied heads, swishing scenic curtains, flickering footlights and copious squirtings and spurtings of various liquids and bodily fluids.
Michael Coveney, The Independent02/04/2009

Steve Marmion’s production, beautifully designed by Tom Scutt and cunningly lit by Malcolm Rippeth, is full of bravura and unusual visual gags.
Michael Coveney, Whatsonstage.com02/04/2009

Mary Rose

Technically, the production is hard to fault. In a world inured to the wizardry of computer effects, Cownie makes the most of some old-fashioned theatrical tricks, using gauzes, spooky music and effects (Philip Pinsky) and subtle lighting effects (Malcolm Rippeth).
Robert Dawson Scott, The Times30/10/2008

The unsettling atmosphere this creates [...] is well-captured in Tony Cownie’s production, not least due to Malcolm Rippeth’s eerie lighting...
Yasmin Sulaiman, The List30/10/2008

Six Characters in Search of an Author

It was one visually arresting coup (brilliant design/lighting/music and sound by Miriam Buether/Malcolm Rippeth/Adam Cork respectively) in an evening of many.
westendwhingers11/10/2008

The Seven Deadly Sins

The Little Prince

Neil Murray's production looks ravishing [...] while the effects of sunset and sunrise are so exquisitely realised you could simply sit and gaze at the lighting for hours.
Alfred Hickling, The Guardian21/12/2006

Faustus

La Penumbra

The undisputed highlight is Liv Lorent’s La Penumbra - an exquisite miniature ballet, spiced with Latin spirit. Her three Mexican dancers are paragons of grace and symmetry, their performances enhanced by Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting design, which creates a backdrop out of their beautiful, oversized silhouettes.
Christopher Collett, The Stage05/06/2006

Hamlet

It is also largely unadorned, to the point of almost complete reliance on Malcolm Rippeth's uncannily skilful lighting rather than scenery.
Carlo Ardito, Plays International 01/03/2006

Lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth has created slanting, consuming shadows as if painted by a Dutch master.
Benjamin Davis, Time Out 01/03/2006

The effect is rather like seeing a Rembrandt painting brought to life, an effect enhanced by Mark Bouman’s costumes and Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting.
Maxwell Cooter, Whatsonstage.com26/02/2006

I should acknowledge many other virtues here - especially Malcolm Rippeth's superb lighting on the Ghost.
Alistair Macaulay, Financial Times22/02/2006

...light pouring in through casement windows like an interior painted by Vermeer.
Georgina Brown, Mail on Sunday 09/10/2005

Macbeth

Cruden’s design, which also includes some masterful use of curtains, is aided enormously by Malcolm Rippeth’s jaw-dropping lighting.
Dave Windass, The Stage23/03/2005

The visual detail dazzles, from the blood that spurts from Banquo's wrists in red ribbon form to Malcolm Rippeth's lighting, all brilliant blue, Martian orange or blood red, but never obvious black.
Evening News 05/03/2005